


but for the grace

by alea_archivist (the_aleator)



Series: A Mere Appendix [10]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Gen, Veterans, War is hell, too many wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-23 15:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_aleator/pseuds/alea_archivist
Summary: Watson encounters the past, and sees what might have been his future.
Series: A Mere Appendix [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636375
Kudos: 10
Collections: Watson's Woes JWP Entries: 2013





	but for the grace

The great bronze lions of the Square glowed softly with the dim sunlight that spread over London with the softness of a mother's touch. Sitting beneath them in the shade of the column, the symbol of Nelson's victory, sat a piteous, tatterdemalion of a man.

The unraveling threads of his overcoat cascaded over his knobby lap, and onto boats worn near thorough with much walking, and little rest. He shook a tin cup with ease, swinging from his knotted fingers.

Beneath the brim of his hat crumpled a face swollen with rheumatism and coarse with hair, and when his head swung towards the sound of Watson's footsteps, he saw the milky white eyes of blindness peer right thorough him.

A silver disk swung from the old neck, and Watson shut his eyes in horror, for he recognized that medal and those oak leaf clasps, and the face of the Queen that hung from it.

"A coin, sir?" The old man rasped, sensing Watson's halt on the pavement. "A coin for an old soldier of the Queen?"

Watson had no answer but the metallic clank of crowns falling into the cup, for his throat was held tight by the spasm of dismay, and he clung to his stick with all the strength of a man of certain fate.

"Bless you, sir." The beggar said, and the broken teeth shone dark as he spoke again "Bless your kindness, sir." The dirty fingernails clutched at the cup, a pittance against the cold and hunger of the great cesspool of the Metropolis, as if it were a gift from heaven.

Could he twitch back in horror from such a sight? How could he dare to do so, when but for God's grace, he might have been the same?

His mind shuddered at it, rejected it at once with the ease of a man with enough food in his belly to last out the night, and the warmth of a cozy fire to sit beside, but his soul blanched in trepidation, and shook with the sameness of it.

He looked with wonderment at his leg, maimed but yet hardy, and the clutching claws of the beggar, and the ropey scars that shone pale white through his rags. The sightless eyes, that gleamed opalescent, and the spittle that clung to the abused and twitching jaws, as well as the crooked legs.

He moved to say that he too had taken the Queen's shilling, to admit at once his brotherhood with the man, for just so the Crimea, so too Afghanistan, but his tongue would not speak, dried up with the shame and horror.

As he moved away with the silent step of a man confronted with history, and recognizing a perhaps, he said these lines _sotto voce_ to the listening air, which remembers many things that man has forgotten.

_"'We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?_   
_You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now.'"_

**Author's Note:**

> JWP #20 - adopt a plot or use an old challenge. I used capt_facepalm's plot about homeless veterans. Note - unbeta-ed and unedited. The medal referred to is the Crimean War Medal, and the poetry Watson recites at the end is from Rudyard Kipling, called 'The Last of the Light Brigade' (1890) and is a written response to Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem.


End file.
